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This listening comprehension gapfill exercise is based on the famous Queen song The Show Must Go On. You have to enter the missing words while listening to the song. You can stop the video whenever you like (or feel free to rewind it even) if you need more time to find the missing words.

Freddy Mercury recorded the vocals for this song when he was already very ill and he never had the chance to play it live, in front of an audience. The video of the song is a montage of earlier Queen videos, and the fact that no new footage of Freddy Mercury was published added to the speculations about his ill health.

The song’s lyrics also contain various references to impending tragedy and the will to live, using metaphors and other figures of speech – this again further fuelled the rumours that he was probably terminally ill.

The song was released as a single in the UK on 14 October 1991 – Freddy Mercury passed away six weeks later.

The difficulty level of this exercise is above B2 level, maybe even close to C1 since the vocabulary is sometimes pretty advanced.

If you come back in a few days, you will find other tasks based on this same song, including more difficult listening comprehension exercises, a reading comprehension exercise about the background of the song and also vocabulary tasks to practice the vocabulary used in the song.

And please don’t forget to like our Facebook page to get updates and find other useful stuff for learners of English, including links and videos.

This is another listening comprehension exercise based on the David Bowie song Space Oddity, but the format is different this time: you have to add the missing words within the video itself, not in a separate frame.

You can also stop the playback or even go back if you need to, but you can’t see the whole lyrics on one page. Some of you might find this design easier to work with — I’m interested in your opinion, so please tell me which version you prefer below when you’ve finished the task.

The difficulty of this task is about B2 level (upper-intermediate).

Please click here to share your opinion about the design of this exercise — do you prefer this design or the earlier one?

These are the previous exercises (with a different design — please check them out to compare and vote above) we currently have based on David Bowie’s Space Oddity:

One of the greatest songs ever written, no doubt. This is a live concert version, recorded in 1981 during the famous Concert in the Park, a free event held in Central Park in New York.

Listen to the song and fill the gaps in the lyrics. You can also get a letter hint if you can’t find a word. Feel free to stop playback any time you need.

The difficulty of this task is probably slightly higher than B2 level (upper-intermediate) because the vocabulary is fairly advanced and the imagery of the lyrics is probably not that easy to comprehend.

We have another listening comprehension exercise based on a Simon & Garfunkel song: The Boxer, which is also very famous.

There will be more exercises built around The Sound of Silence, including vocabulary and reading comprehension tasks as well as various difficulty level listening exercises, so please check back.

And please don’t forget to like our Facebook page to get updates and find other useful stuff for learners of English, including links and videos.

Hello is one of Adele’s greatest hits: it broke the Vevo Record by achieving over 27.7 million views within a 24-hour span and it reached the number one spot in almost every country.

This is a listening comprehension exercise based on the song: watch the video and complete the lyrics by filling the gaps. Feel free to stop the playback whenever you need to. You can also ask for letter hints if you can’t find a word.

The difficulty of this task is around B2 level (upper-intermediate) as the vocabulary is not too difficult and Adele’s singing voice is fairly easy to understand.

This is a listening comprehension exercise based on Sade’s song, No Ordinary Love. Listen to the song and complete the lyrics by filling the gaps with one word in each gap. Feel free to stop (or even rewind) the video whenever you need to.

The difficulty of this task is about intermediate level (B1 on the CEFR scale).

The vocabulary exercises below are based on the lyrics of David Bowie’s song, Space Oddity. Start with an easy matching exercise and then you can choose from five different task types (in the bottom right corner, where it says “Choose a Study Mode”): Match, Learn, Test, Flashcards, Spell – you can probably guess how each one works but try them all.

We have a number of exercises based on the song Space Oddity by David Bowie; here’s the list:

David Bowie’s Space Oddity is famous for many reasons: for example, it was recorded before the first Moon landing — which is pretty cool, considering its topic. It is also the song that was used for the first ever music video recorded in space, by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station.

Your task here is to listen to the song and complete the lyrics; feel free to stop the video whenever you like.

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